MANUSCRIPT: Manuscript Notebook, Russian 1927; together with TYPESCRIPT: "Is America a Woman’s Paradise" typescript essay.
Dorothy Thompson’s
Notes On Her 1927 Trip To Russia
With Typescript Draft Of Her Essay “Is America A Woman’s Paradise?”
Thompson, Dorothy. Notes On Her 1927 Trip To Russia, With Typescript Draft Of Her Essay “Is America A Woman’s Paradise?” N.D. (ca. 1927).
Notebook; 6 x 9”; ca. 60 leaves in leather-bound three-ring binder, many two sides; comprised of typed and manuscript notes; undated, though ca. November – December 1927; front flap full of newspaper clippings mentioning Sinclair Lewis, namely his divorce to his first wife and subsequent marriage to Thompson; name of Katherine E. Bailey signed to inner cover.
Thompson’s notebook records her stay in Russia and represents a pivotal time in her life. Sent by the New York Evening Post in November 1927 to cover the 10th anniversary celebration of the Bolshevik Revolution, her assignment was to spend two months in Moscow and write a major series of no less than 20 articles documenting “the New Russia.” With her experience as a foreign correspondent, there was hardly anyone better suited to the task and Thompson’s biographer states that her arrival was met with “open arms” by everyone from Soviet officials to an international array of cultural figures. Though it was an adventure of a lifetime, Thompson felt isolated; in her own words, she describes her arrival in her notebook:
In Moscow a blizzard was blowing. My feet in silk stockings and low shoes were stinging; the snow was in my eyes. No one, the white aproned porters, very grubby as to apron and grubbier underneath speaks a word of anything but Russian, no interpreters are about. No one in the ticket offices or the baggage room understands a word of another language. My German companions are delegates and have been met by huge delegations of Soviet officials, and are taken off, grandly, in official cars. I am deserted, and begin to feel how far Russia is from the rest of the world.
The Russian assignment came on the heels of several turbulent months for Thompson. She was long torn between her professional role as a successful reporter and the domestic role of wife and lover, and the divide deepened after meeting her future husband, Sinclair Lewis, in July 1927. Thompson was recently divorced and he was still married, but neither this nor the fact that they had just met prevented him from proposing to her that very evening. During her courtship with Lewis, Thompson’s need to take control of her life gained a sense of urgency as she became painfully aware of his alcoholism. After a particularly bad night early in their relationship, on September 9, 1927, she observed his drinking and confided in her journal, “I saw that this thing will always dash the reality away – I saw all this, and thought, ‘I will get up and go. Somehow I will reconstruct my life. There is still work…” (qtd. in Kurth, p. 120). In the coming months, before her departure for Russia, Thompson vowed to leave Lewis if he didn’t stop drinking.
After finishing his first draft of Dodsworth at the end of November 1927, however, Lewis spent ten days in Russia with Thompson and his visit, in many ways, sealed the couple’s fate. When the famous, soon-to-be Nobel prize-winning author stepped off the plane and told reporters that he was in Moscow solely to see Dorothy Thompson, she was by all accounts happy, if not relieved, to see him. Thompson finally accepted his proposal and they were married in August 1928.
Despite low morale at the onset of her assignment and turmoil in her personal life, Thompson’s articles for the Post were a success. Her ample skill as a reporter is evident in her insightful observations into Russian politics and her lively, detailed accounts of Moscow, its culture, and people. Thompson’s professional life was in a continuous upswing from this point forward and it was she who would breathe new life into Lewis’s career in the coming years – not the other way around. Following the couple’s return to the United St
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